Gender and Animation

Imagine an evening with everyone sitting together, the room darkening; the first picture appears on the hanging sheet and the narrator starts his or her story. The form and content of the tale are always a little different – it…

In the final months of 1917, Helena Smith Dayton (1883–1960) released a one-reel production of Romeo and Juliet starring a cast of characters crafted entirely out of clay. Though identifiable now as a pioneering work of stop-motion animation, the film’s…

It would not be controversial to say that Disney’s historical record of representing women is complicated at best. It becomes even more complicated when we consider the Disney Princess franchise, a plethora of paratexts that arguably undermine any progressive readings…

According to a 2015 Los Angeles Times article, the majority of animation production students in the US are female, yet they comprise less than a fifth of the workforce in creative roles in the American animation industry. This situation is…

In a clip hosted on Cartoon Brew’s website Caroline Leaf relates her process and the gestation of the mesmerising, darkly etched film Entre Deux Soers (Two Sisters, 1990) stating that her film took ten years to come to fruition. This revelation…

Leeds Animation Workshop (LAW) started in 1977 as a campaigning group of female friends. This group was the first British, all female animation collective, and to date it has produced and distributed approximately 40 short films, making use of animation…

Asparagus (1979, by Suzan Pitt) follows a face-less blonde woman who unleashes her fantasy and creativity into bizarre visions and events, conjuring and transforming objects with vibrating colors and forms that often acquire sexual connotations. While Asparagus is now considered…

Last year, Studio Ghibli’s producer, Yoshiaki Nishimura, caused something of a stir when he stated that whether or not Ghibli would hire a female director would depend on the type of film it would be produced. He stated: “Women tend…

While Sandra Lahire (1950-2001) is best known for her live action films, prior to 1986 she was working primarily with animation. These early works have received little attention, possibly because of their experimental approach and difficult subject matter. Throughout her…

In the seminal study of Weimar cinema, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German film (1947), Siegfried Kracauer offers an intriguing tribute to Lotte Reiniger, the pioneering filmmaker best known today for directing the earliest surviving animated feature,…